Pyshminsky Museum of Agricultural History and Peasant Life

About museum

In the 1970s, the Pyshminskaya secondary school had a room of military glory where materials on the history of the 40th Guards Yenakiieve-Danube Rifle Division were collected (more than 50 people from Pyshma fought in that division), as well as items of the region's material culture. In 1986 the museum that grew out of that room became state-owned. Today at the Pyshminsky Museum of Agricultural History and Peasant Life you can visit a cozy corner of a peasant home and see a stylized Russian stove. Discover how a peasant izba of the 17th–18th centuries differed from a 19th-century house, what a pyatistenok (a five-sided alcove) and a posudnaya gorka (dish rack/cupboard) are, and why the gornitsa (parlor) was the unique space of every family. You will see a variety of old vessels for traditional Russian drinks (kvass, sbiten, kissel, braga). Learn what Russian peasants drank and what vessels they used in everyday life, how old kvass is and whether it was known before the Slavs, how long kissel could be stored and why it was in old times cut with knives and sold on trays.